Exquisite Prisons - O'Dwyer, Edward

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Résumé :
Edward O'Dwyer's poems in Exquisite Prisons pack the quotidian with a creeping terror; motorists nervously migrate to investigate the car stalled at the lights, a father is filmed throwing his child higher and higher, a husband wonders if his wife also fantasizes about killing him. These poems are savagely ironic, authoritative and delivered in an unsettling coaxing voice that occupies that same dazzling imaginative territory as Shirley Jackson in The Lottery. - Eleanor Hooker

These are poems which explore the preciousness and unreliability of what we think of as 'the present'. They often unpick fleeting moments, but their impact is enduring. Highly recommended. - Helen Mort

In Exquisite Prisons, Edward O'Dwyer considers the reasons people need other people: to validate, reflect, desire, resist, and mourn. These poems are surreal, sneakily funny and unashamedly sad. The images will stay with you. O'Dwyer's poetic voice is utterly contemporary and the poems have a wittily executed lightness of touch which charms the reader. - Susan Millar DuMars & Kevin Higgins

Edward O'Dwyer's Exquisite Prisons is a country where anything resembling a clich? is turned back at the border. This is a brilliant, original, courageous, dramatic, often painful collection, with no simple 'happy ever after' endings. The dark truths shine. Many of the poems are elegiac in tone throughout. The relationship poems are tortured and intriguing. Tough poems but also so much joy - the joy is in the language, the words written in steel. Welcome to an unforgettable country. - Tim Cunningham

Biographie:
Edward O'Dwyer is a secondary school teacher, poet and fiction writer from Limerick, Ireland. Exquisite Prisons is his third collection of poems from Salmon Poetry. It follows The Rain on Cruise's Street (2014), which was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes, and Bad News, Good News, Bad News (2017), which contains the poem, 'The Whole History of Dancing', winner of the Best Original Poem award from Eigse Michael Hartnett Festival 2018. He has represented Ireland at Poesiefestival, Berlin, for their European 'renshi' project. He took part in Poetry Ireland's Introductions Series, and has been shortlisted for a Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry. His first short story collection, Cheat Sheets, was published by Truth Serum Press in 2018 and features on The Lonely Crowd journal's 'Best Books of 2018' list. His poems and stories have been published in journals and anthologies around the world, both digitally and in print. He is the current Poet Laureate of Adare, Limerick, named by Poetry Ireland as part of their Poetry Town initiative.